More Friday notes from the wood shop...

Well, I went back down to the wood after lunch to take a look at the beech bowl and the honey locust tea box. The beech bowl had really distorted quite a bit and I decided against my better judgement to try and re turn it round again, which predictable results:

It doesn't have enough thickness left in the walls to true it up so this one will have to be tossed.

But the honey locust box is coming out well. It's very rough from drying but it managed to keep its shape. Here are photos of the side and the interior:

This is really going to be pretty when its finished. I'm going to need to make a lid for it, the question being what kind of wood to use? It think a yellow, vanilla colored wood would really look great on the box and the type of wood that comes to mind is clear pine. It has a similar grain pattern and a wonderful vanilla yellow color so I'm going to take some pine I have in the shop and make a top and see what it look like. If it doesn't work out, then we'll get a hold of some hickory and try that.

I decided just for the heck of it to take a look at the sycamore bowl:

As you can see it's really distorted and it has two cracks in it.

Sometimes there's a lot to be said for kiln-dried lumber. People criticize it as being boring and it's true that the wild grain patterns and lovely colors are usually missing from kiln dried lumber. But it's is dried out and it doesn't distort after it's been cut.  Sometimes working with green unseasoned wood is a lot like having a drama queen in the wood shop. You just never know what they are going to do.

So we'll be using kiln dried lumber for the tea boxes so come on back and see how this works out.

...sigh...

More later,
VW